The Backpack Blog

You’ve just graduated from your University or college. The time is opportune to travel for several reasons. Joining Backpack’s global community helps makes post-graduate travels more affordable while at the same time helping people out all around the world. As I said, there are several reasons why it is the perfect time for all you recent college or university graduates to travel. First of all, you do not yet have the obligations and “tie-downs” that a steady job or a family imposes on a person. If you were to stay in your home country for even another few years, you would find that the job, apartment, and contacts you acquire in that time make it very difficult or impossible to pick up and leave. While travelling, you may be able to work odd jobs while staying always on the move as a backpacker.

Secondly, you are at the point in your life where seeing different cultures and foreign viewpoints is a perfect way to put all of your education in perspective. I feel this is especially important to those who want to go to graduate school. Being well-educated is, of course, a fantastic way for one to figure out his or her place in the world and to determine what field to pursue in further learning opportunities, but it is, for all intents and purposes, theoretical. Traveling the world, seeing how others with different opportunities and worldviews live, and getting a chance to apply some of your well-rounded education will help you narrow down your exact interests, as well as establish you further as a citizen of the world.

Seriously. You need to take this opportunity and travel now while the time is right. I was talking to some relatives the other day about why I was choosing to travel to Asia now rather than in a few years, once I was able to accumulate a bit of money as a safety net. We agreed: now is the opportune time, both in an economic and personal development sense. If I don’t travel now, we agreed, I probably would not end up doing it until MUCH later in my life, probably after retirement. The same is likely true of everyone, and so I strongly urge you to take this opportunity to travel to your heart’s content.